Monday, October 16, 2006

Nobody cares what you had for lunch

At Bob's urging, I just made my lunch for tomorrow. A bowl of chili, with a little baggie of cheese to sprinkle on top; carrots and celery sticks with Ranch dressing for dipping; and a "guacamole kit" -- an avocado, and a container with some salsa, lemon juice, cumin, sour cream, and salt. Hopefully the avocado will be good--you never know until you cut one open. But assuming it is, I'll peel it and mash it, and mix it with the other stuff, and have guacamole--I also stuck in a few stale, broken tortilla chips from the bottom of a bag that I found in the cabinet.

I've been looking through a bunch of lunch photos on Flickr, like Show Me Your Lunch!. There are also groups devoted to particular lunch boxes, i.e., Laptop Lunch and Mr. Bento. Also just generic, and various bento boxes.

I'm not sure why it's so fascinating to me, but I just love to see what everyone packs for their lunch. It inspires me to think of new things for my own lunch. I sometimes wish that food wasn't so important to me, but having something fun to look forward to for lunch really improves my day. Last week I took mostly salads--lettuce, but lots of stuff added, like fresh mushrooms, ripe olives, banana peppers, artichoke hearts. I made vegetable soup this weekend, so today I took a salad and a bowl of soup.

There's a new book out, No One Cares What You Had for Lunch: 100 Ideas for Your Blog, and a lot of bloggers have been mentioning it. The proliferation of "lunch" photo groups would kind of belie that notion, though. (I realize it's just a silly title to get attention, and I do get the point. But I still like to see what everyone has for lunch.)

A long-time reader, Val, in Indiana, sent us a Halloween care package--an orange handtowel with a black cat on it, Halloween votive candles, a pumpkin bread mix, jams and jellies, apple cider tea, and a container of peanut butter dog treats that she made herself for Simon and Jojo. I took them in to work today, and Dave was amazed that someone would take the time and trouble to do that. But hey, those dogs are celebrities! Rock stars, even!

It really is interesting how when you read someone's site for awhile (or, in the case of this site, some people have been reading it for ten years!) you get to know and care for the people you're reading about. Through what I write, and the pictures that I post, everyone knows what my workplace looks like, who I work with, and what the dogs get up to. And, of course, what Bob is like, and what the cats are doing . . . I don't know. It's kind of a weird thing, I guess. But interesting, and I still enjoy doing it.

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